


Caretaking

by INMH



Series: trope-bingo Fanfiction Fills 2018 (1st Half) [17]
Category: The Alienist (TV), The Alienist - Caleb Carr
Genre: Alcohol, Canon - Book, Canon - TV, Canonical Character Death, Drama, Humor, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Romance, Sexual Content, Spoilers, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-29 05:00:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13919889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Mostly Book-verse with a splash of TV-canon. Laszlo has a solution for one of John’s proclivities.





	Caretaking

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I decided to go with a more literal interpretation of “indecent proposal”. 
> 
> Also, I mean, we could say this is like… Maybe a few months before Angel of Darkness, which takes place a year after The Alienist ends.

“This has to stop.”  
  
John looked up at Laszlo with a bleary gaze, brain throbbing dully in a steady tempo inside his skull, glass of vodka hanging limply from his fingers. He didn’t respond; Laszlo was in lecture-mode, the same sort of attitude he gave Stevie whenever he lectured him about his cigarette smoking.  
  
“You’re going to contract something. Do you want to end up like Wolff? Ridden with syphilis and begging for death?”  
  
John’s eyes slipped shut, and he shook his head mildly. Intellectually he understood that these things were a risk; the brothel’s Madam swore that her girls were clean, but John knew that she could be lying, or that the girls could be lying, or that they could be sick and not even be aware of it. But it had never been enough of a risk to deter him from seeking out the company of prostitutes.  
  
“What is it that’s so difficult that you can’t speak to me about it?”  
  
How can he explain? How can he explain to Laszlo, who’s had maybe two paramours in his life, about how lonely and heartbroken he’s felt since Julia abandoned him? How can he explain, without forcing himself to be subjected to Dr. Kreizler’s usual analytical behavior and rationale, how finding sexual company with these women gave him some measure of relief? John was in no mood to have his mind picked to pieces over this matter, by Laszlo or anyone else.  
  
Laszlo leaned forward, braced himself on the arms of John’s chair; his bad arm quivered slightly, unaccustomed to the weight. “I’d rather you not die young or be permanently crippled from some preventable disease. If you need some sort of emotional release, come to me- we can talk about it.”  
  
John felt like rolling his eyes, but his head was still spinning a little and he didn’t want to throw up on Laszlo’s carpet.  
  
[---]  
  
He did it again.  
  
Because of course he did.  
  
John was nothing if not pathological in his behavior- at least that was what Laszlo was claiming; throwing out words that John knew better when his brain wasn’t addled by too much alcohol. Whatever, Laszlo could use whatever words he wanted, he didn’t know everything, and he definitely didn’t know everything that was going on in John’s head, even if he was right sometimes.  
  
_He said to come to him,_ John thought, and if thoughts could be unsteady, his were. So was the rest of him, for that matter, and if he hadn’t already been close to Laszlo’s home he might have just turned around and gone home, as bashed as he was. _I’ll go see him, I’ll go see him right now._  
  
When he got to the door, he tried to knock carefully, because Cyrus and Stevie were probably asleep and he didn’t need to wake them. Laszlo, on the other hand, was very likely still burning the midnight oil, and that was proven correct when after a few haphazard knocks, the door opened and Laszlo was standing in the doorway, looking confused.  
  
“John?”  
  
“Laszlo,” John slurred, and Laszlo’s eyes fell shut.  
  
“You should come in,” He said, stepping aside and ushering John in.  
  
John stumbled into the foyer, then the sitting room, and nearly slammed into a chair when he misjudged the distance between it and where he’d been standing. When he turned around to face Laszlo (whose arms were crossed, and his eyes were sharp) again, it took him a moment to focus so that he stopped seeing double. When Laszlo didn’t say anything, John felt compelled to speak. “You said I could come to you.”  
  
“I meant _instead_ of going to- Oh, there’s no point, I doubt you’ll remember this tomorrow,” Laszlo sighed, shaking his head, waving his hand.  
  
“What were you going to do?”  
  
“ _Talk_ with you, John,” Laszlo said, sounding vaguely desperate. “I would have _talked_ with you about what it was that was compelling you to seek out prostitutes.”  
  
“I don’t talk much with them.”  
  
(That wasn’t necessarily true; John had actually had quite a few decent conversations with some of the prostitutes before their time with him was up, but it depended entirely on who he was with.)  
  
“No, I imagine you don’t.”  
  
“I can show you what I do with them.”  
  
“I don’t-”  
  
John stumbled forward drunkenly and pressed a sloppy kiss to Laszlo’s lips (later, he would be shocked that he actually managed to land there the first time). His old friend jerked back, startled, and looked at John with wide eyes. “John?”  
  
“You said I could come to you,” John repeated, vision swimming.  
  
“This isn’t quite what I meant,” Laszlo said with a soft, infuriatingly calm voice.  
  
“This is what I do when I go to brothels.”  
  
There were other words after that, but at this point John’s brain was so flooded with alcohol that it simply stopped recording what was said.  
  
[---]  
  
John woke up.  
  
At first, there was nothing but the hazy, warm feeling of waking up out of a deep sleep; then the headache registered, and he groaned.  
  
_God,_ he thought, _there it is again._  
  
He only noticed that he wasn’t in his bed when every bit of him became oversensitive from the hangover, nose hyper-aware of every smell around him. It did not take him long to recognize the smell of the sheets, the particular cleaner that he associated with Laszlo’s house, and he sighed to think that he’d ended up at Laszlo’s because that meant he might have made a fool of himself while drunk, and Laszlo was sure to lecture him about-  
  
About-  
  
John flew up in bed, and then groaned pitifully when his head ached like a bell struck with a mallet.  
  
_Oh God._  
  
_Oh God, what did I do?_  
  
He’d fucking kissed a man, one of his best friends since childhood, in a drunken fucking stupor, that’s what he’d done. John sat there for a long moment, waiting for the ache in his head to become manageable, just repeating that single thought on loop: _God, I kissed Laszlo. God, I kissed Laszlo. God, I kissed Laszlo._ When he was capable of more complex thought he added, _God, I kissed Laszlo, he’s going to fucking kill me. God, I kissed Laszlo, he’s going to fucking kill me._  
  
What was he supposed to do? It’d be one thing if John were in his own home, because he could just as easily buckle down in his house until Laszlo inevitably came to drag him out (it always happened eventually). But right now he was _in Laszlo’s home_ , in a spare bed, too hungover to even consider trying to get home (he’d be just as likely to pass out from the pain of the light outside, which was currently mercifully muted by the curtains over the windows.)  
  
John set his head back down and went back to sleep.  
  
When he woke up next, Laszlo was standing in the doorway, and John damn near had a heart-attack.  
  
“John,” Laszlo greeted in an utterly neutral tone, face blank.  
  
John swallowed thickly, heart pounding. “Laszlo.” When Laszlo offered no response, he licked his lips and said, nervously, “Laszlo, I didn’t, uh-”  
  
“I’d like you to join me for dinner tonight.”  
  
John had never heard such an ominous dinner invitation in his life, and he’d grown up amongst New York’s elite. Laszlo’s expression suddenly wasn’t so blank anymore; there was an edge, a shadow to his eye that sent a shiver down John’s spine. “I… I should probably get home. Grandmother’s prone to worrying if I’m not in by noon at least.”  
  
“It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.”  
  
_Damn it._  
  
“Oh.”  
  
[---]  
  
John felt like a rabbit eyeing a fox.  
  
The little cogs in Laszlo’s brain were turning, sure as anything, and John was waiting for the axe to fall.  
  
“What’d you do?” Stevie asked when John stepped outside for a quick cigarette. Cyrus was nearby, repairing a part of the calash.  
  
“Best you don’t know,” John murmured, lighting up a cigarette and holding it between shaking fingers. “Why? Why do you ask?”  
  
Stevie shrugged. “The Doctor’s been funny today.”  
  
“ _Very_ funny,” Cyrus agreed, looking at John with a raised eyebrow that perfectly conveyed ‘I don’t know what you did, but you have completely and utterly fucked yourself’. Did Cyrus know? John was suddenly paranoid that he knew; Stevie was a bright kid, but there were some things he was largely naïve to, and it was entirely possible that Cyrus knew or had guessed the nature of what had happened the night before.  
  
(He thought of Mary, and how Laszlo might have felt about John’s drunken, stupid advances in the context of having last been with her and lost her, and felt sick.)  
  
“Well,” John mumbled, taking a long drag on the cigarette and vaguely hoping that it would suffocate him, “It should be sorted soon, anyway.”  
  
He didn’t see Laszlo until dinner, deliberately avoiding him to delay the inevitable. And the inevitable, as it turned out, was more of that strange look that he’d gotten earlier, more of that ‘funny’ behavior that Stevie and Cyrus had spoken of. Laszlo did not speak. He simply ate his food and stared at John in the most unsettling way.  
  
There was a reckoning coming- or maybe this _was_ the reckoning.  
  
After all, who best would know how to cause extreme mental and emotional discomfort in a man than an alienist- especially an alienist who’d known him since they were children, knew the little things that would drive John to actual lunacy?  
  
“Are you enjoying your food, John?” Laszlo asked, with that maddeningly mild tone.  
  
John smiled shakily. “Certainly."  
  
( _I am fucked._ )  
   
[---]  
   
Eventually, they were in the sitting room.  
  
John was not drinking; he was shaking a little, a combination of nerves and the fact that his last drink was over twelve hours ago. He was just sitting uncomfortably on the sofa, waiting for the shoe to drop.  
  
It was coming.  
  
Laszlo was staring at him from his chair, and John had never been more terrified.  
  
“I’ve been thinking, John.”  
  
John swallowed. “Yes?” He wasn’t proud of how squeaky the word came out.  
  
“I’ve been thinking about your _problem_.” Laszlo gave a small (obviously calculated) nonchalant shrug, looking at John without blinking. “And it occurs to me that perhaps I’ve been approaching it the wrong way.”  
  
He then got up, strode over to the sofa, and sat down beside John.  
  
(Very, unusually close beside John.)  
  
“You don’t go to brothels for conversation, I imagine- or at least, you don’t go there specifically for that purpose. You go there for something else that’s very specific, something that can only be met through sexual intercourse, not through rational discussion. You’ve developed your own course of treatment for your trauma, and the only flaw of it is the risk you’re putting yourself in by having sex with strangers who could be ill or otherwise dangerous to you.”  
  
(John would be lying if he said there had never been a prostitute that had knifed a customer and taken their money.)  
  
“So, logically, the best way to handle this situation would be to speak your language, as it were.”  
  
And then- with the absolute _gall_ that only Laszlo Kreizler was capable of- he leaned forward and kissed John.  
  
And John’s mind simply collapsed.  
   
[---]  
   
“It needn’t be romantic.”  
  
(How could it be interpreted as anything else, as long as they’d known each other?)  
  
“It isn’t as though you’ve never slept with a man before.”  
  
(How did he even _know_ about that?)  
  
“If there’s some _other_ way you’d like to solve this problem, we can do that.”  
  
“God damn you, Laszlo, I _don’t have a problem!_ ” John exploded in a moment of stress-induced hysteria.  
  
Laszlo arched an eyebrow at him. “So you _intended_ to kiss me last night.”  
  
“No! I was-” John covered his face with his hands.  
  
“You _do_ have a problem, John, one I fear you won’t appreciate until your face is covered in sores or your body’s found in a ditch.” Laszlo gave another of those utterly-unconcerned shrugs, like they were discussing the goddamn daily news and not potentially engaging in a homosexual relationship with one another as some sort of cockamamie scheme to help John’s mental health (God, it sounded even madder laid out so plainly). “I’m offering assistance in a way that seems to work for you. You needn’t accept if you don’t want it.”  
  
John stared at him for the longest time, waiting for, perhaps, Laszlo to break out in a grin and admit that it was all a joke, that he’d managed to resurrect his long-dead sense of humor from the grave and was simply having a laugh at John’s expense.  
  
“Or, you could think on it for a time.”  
  
“That,” John said lamely, “That. That… I’ll do that.”  
  
He left after that, went back home, endured his grandmother’s frantic, borderline hysterical barrage of questions about where he’d been, what he’d been doing, because for _goodness sakes, John, I thought you were lying dead in the street somewhere!_  
  
“I’m fine, Grandmother,” John murmured a little dazedly, kissing her cheek to mollify her before heading upstairs, “I’m perfectly fine.”  
  
That wasn’t entirely true, but it would work for now.  
  
John did not sleep well; but when he did, he remembered with uncomfortably fine clarity what kissing Laszlo had felt like.  
   
[---]  
   
A week later, his grandmother was dead.  
  
John was lost; his grandmother was the only family member with which he had any real relationship. None of them had quite forgiven the outburst at his brother’s funeral, where he’d condemned the society that had required him to repress himself so badly that he’d needed opium and alcohol to cope. And now, now he was without her, possibly the only family member he’d had left that had quite possibly loved him unconditionally.  
  
Laszlo and Sara were present at the funeral; Sara’s presence confused no one, given that she and John were of a social circle and she continued to be of good standing, but Laszlo received a few odd, even outright hostile looks. There were enough members of John’s grandmother’s circle who knew of his “anti-family-unit” (or whatever rubbish Laszlo’s detractors claimed him to be) views to take a dim view of him, and an even dimmer view of John for associating with him.  
  
Sara had to return to work, and she kissed John on the cheek and gave him a warm hug. “I’m so sorry, John,” She murmured.  
  
“Thank you,” John responded, unable to think of anything else to say.  
  
“If you need anything, you let me know.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Sara left; Laszlo materialized by his side. “Would you like a ride home, John?” There was a wake, but John could not, by God, bring himself to go to it; it would be nothing but hell, with his family avoiding him or giving him chilly looks all night. Merely entertaining the thought was making his stomach clench.  
  
But the thought of going back to his home- to his home that was very likely not going to be his home for much longer, owing to the particulars of his grandmother’s will- made him feel even worse. He hadn’t felt anything this terrible since Julia had left him, betrayed him, and John was terrified of what would happen, what sort of decisions he might make once he was alone.  
  
Which left one other option.  
  
“Laszlo…” John whispered, clenching his fists again and again, unable to complete his request.  
  
How was he to ask for this? John wasn’t even certain he wanted sex from Laszlo, he just badly needed to be around someone familiar- indeed, he feared that if he were left alone, he might go on such a bender of alcohol and whores that he would kill himself from it. They really would find him dead in a gutter, passed out in his own vomit, and his family would be muttering about how they’d always knew he’d go that way.  
  
Laszlo, thank Christ, seemed to understand. “Would you like to come back with me?”  
  
John nodded numbly. “If you’d let me.”  
  
“Of course.”  
   
[---]

“Not to be a bad host, John,” Laszlo remarked gently as he poured John some gin, “But given the events of the day, I do plan to cut you off after a certain amount of drinks. So imbibe slowly.”  
  
John nodded absently, and sipped lightly from the glass.  
  
They sat together for a long time, both on the sofa as they’d been the week before, but with Laszlo at a respectful distance. John knew that Laszlo would do nothing unless he indicated he wanted him to; for years he had questioned whether or not Laszlo had a sex-drive at all, and it was difficult to think of him deliberately trying to seduce John unless he believed John was entirely interested.  
_  
Was_ John interested? With a few hours distance from the funeral, the rawness of his feelings were grating, and he was feeling that insistent impulse to go for a walk, which would inevitably lead to a brothel where he could drink and fuck indiscriminately, as long as he had money. But Laszlo was offering, for free- and though he wouldn’t have admitted it under torture, John had, in the past, quietly considered that his friend was an attractive man.  
  
He told himself it was the gin kicking in, even though he’d taken Laszlo’s warning seriously and wasn’t even halfway through the glass.  
_  
What do I do?_  
  
John agonized over that question for several minutes.  
  
Then, he downed his glass; and after refilling it and returning to the sofa, he sat down right next to Laszlo. After a moment, waiting for a reaction and getting none, he reached out and put a hand on Laszlo’s knee. There was a long moment where, once again, there was no reaction, and John was nearly faint with anxiety until Laszlo spoke.  
  
“Are you certain about this?”  
  
John swallowed thickly. “Are you?”  
  
Laszlo gave him a small, soft smile.  
  
This time, John was ready for the kiss.  
  
As he spent most of his time, sexually, with women, it was always a bit jarring to kiss a man. Admittedly, some of the surprise had been taken out by the fact that this was (technically) the third kiss they’d shared, but the surprise was replaced by a steady, thrumming nervousness as he kissed Laszlo, a sense that he was embarking on something far more dangerous than he previous odd rendezvous with strangers he’d met at bars and such; even though, logically, he was far safer because those strange men could have been baiting him into a beat-down for accepting their advances, and Laszlo would never tell anyone of this.  
  
With time, though, some of those nerves bled away, and John found himself with the same, pleasant buzz of a feeling he got whenever he was with someone sexually. That being said, there was something extra there, something he could only attribute to the fact that he was with Laszlo, of all people; that he was with someone he knew and trusted and had an actual bond with. The kiss deepened, and John found his hands wandering to Laszlo’s collarbone, playing with the edge of his shirt, tickling the bit of skin he could get to.  
  
Laszlo (damn him) had been right: This _was_ a ‘language’ that John spoke far better than the one full of painful emotions and mental anguish. He could not put into words what miseries he felt, and if he tried- well, he didn’t know what would happen, but it felt as though a pit was opening up inside of him when he tried, and he feared ripping himself apart if he pushed too far.  
  
But this, this was something that worked much better for him.  
  
After a time, Laszlo gently broke the kiss, and looked at John with, John was gratified to see, a sort of glazed expression, like he’d been a little more overwhelmed than he’d expected.  
  
“Perhaps we should move this upstairs.”

[---]  
  
_This can’t be real._  
  
John was sitting on the bed, tugging at his tie awkwardly, absently, as he watched Laszlo undo his vest. Once he had, he set it on the bedside table and then- without so much as a word- got to his knees, sliding easily between John’s thighs. The implications were immediately obvious, and John let out a low, shaky breath.  
  
“Is this alright?” Laszlo asked.  
  
John nodded, eyes wide, and Laszlo’s smiled a little before he opened John’s trousers and pulled his cock out. He didn’t do anything, didn’t touch or squeeze, but John still felt himself growing hard, weak from nothing if not the attention and possibility of the situation.  
  
Laszlo eyed him for a moment, thinking, calculating, and then looked up at John, blinking innocently. “I’m afraid I’ve never done this before,” he said with his usual mild tone. “You’ll have to instruct me.”  
  
_Oh Jesus Christ._  
  
“Uh-” John licked his lips, swallowed thickly. “You just- You just watch, watch your teeth.”  
  
Laszlo nodded, and then leaned forward to brush his lips over the head of John’s cock. John paled, knuckles going white as he clenched his fingers on the arms of the chair. Laszlo’s motions were careful, probing, lightly kissing different parts of John’s cock without any sucking, the hair of his mustache tickling the skin tantalizingly. That was what John felt; but the simple _sight_ of Laszlo mouthing along his length went a lot farther than just that.  
  
He needed to stop, or this was going to be over embarrassingly fast.  
  
But how could John ask him to stop, or slow down? It felt like if he interrupted this, it would end, and if it ended, there was a solid chance that John was going to drop dead right then and there. Hesitantly, his right hand came up to rest on Laszlo’s head, trying not to grab or pull.  
  
“This is good?” Laszlo asked, but it was obvious from his tone that he already knew the answer.  
  
“Yes,” John wheezed, breathing deeply and trying so very _fucking_ hard not to orgasm. “I might, uh, I might-” He made a little noise and squeezed Laszlo’s shoulder, not able to bring himself to use the same words he usually used at the brothels- it would be too strange with Laszlo.  
  
There was hesitation, a brief crack in the armor to suggest that Laszlo really was doing this for the first time, but slowly, surely, he took John’s cock into his mouth properly, even down his throat a bit, and John gasped, eyes rolling back in his head. “Fuck, _fuck!_ Laszlo, Laszlo stop, Laszlo stop-!”  
  
Laszlo pulled off, and John didn’t orgasm; but he had such a sudden surge of energy, such a maddening desire to participate, that he yanked Laszlo up by the shoulders and kissed him roughly, and then pulled him onto the bed. John crawled on top of him, pressed down on him, kissed him and ground against him, reaching down and groping him through his trousers. Laszlo made a ragged sound, something entirely spontaneous, and John came. They kept moving against one another, and he heard Laszlo make a few low noises before jerking sharply before falling still.  
  
John rolled off of him, and they lay together for a time, staring at the ceiling and collecting themselves. Finally, John said, “What in the _fuck_ was all that about you never having done that before, you goddamned liar?”  
  
Laszlo laughed.  
   
[---]  
   
Sleeping beside Laszlo was an odd experience.  
  
They’d slept in close quarters before, on trains and in narrow hotel rooms and whatnot, but never in the same bed. Having Laszlo nearby was not unusual, but being able to- physically and socially speaking- lay an arm across his chest was not. The fingers of Laszlo’s good hand were idly brushing through John’s hair, and his bad arm was lying at his side. John tried not to stare, but it was difficult: As he didn’t usually see Laszlo unclothed, he also didn’t usually get a good look at his weaker arm; though the only real difference was that it was lacking in muscle-mass, not withered but largely unused, it was still a startling sight.  
  
There were times when John wished he had Laszlo’s capacity for looking through people, that he could turn it on him and see what was in his head. For all of his straightforwardness in so many ways, it was often impossible to tell exactly what Laszlo was thinking at any given moment, especially when doing things like, say, inviting your best friend into your bed under the guise of therapeutic activity.  
  
“I suppose it would be foolish to ask if you enjoyed yourself,” Laszlo said softly.  
  
“Mm.” John hated to admit it, but he did feel quite a bit better now than he had before- better, even, than he felt from his usual carousing routine, because he didn’t have a headache or stink of cheap perfume. Part of it was afterglow, he knew, and the knowledge that he would be forced to venture back into the world and deal with his grandmother’s death, emotionally and practically, sent a thrum of anxiety through him; he retreated him it, lightly, subtly pressing in a little closer to Laszlo.  
  
But part of it was something else, and the idea of examining it with any real closeness was, at the moment, too daunting to consider.  
  
“Better than the brothels of New York?”  
  
That was a petty stab from a man who had just won the game, but John huffed a laugh and said, “Yes, Laszlo, your mouth was better than any prostitute I have ever had the pleasure of cavorting with.”  
  
“Excellent.” A beat. “So you’d do it again, if you felt the urge? You’d come to me instead?”  
  
John turned his head a little to regard Laszlo directly, and he was met with that damnably familiar, inscrutable wall of neutrality. It took no great brains to suggest that perhaps Laszlo had had ulterior motive to suggesting this course of action, that perhaps he had been interested in John prior to this incident (the possibility that this was, perhaps, misguided emotion he was directing at John as a result of Mary’s death occurred, and John squashed it, feeling sick.) And it was impossible for John to say what he would find more comforting: That Laszlo did indeed harbor some sort of latent attraction for him, or that this was purely an (unusual) attempt to stop John from engaging in risky behaviors that could end badly for him.  
  
And it was brilliant, really: They’d shared something intimate, something Laszlo knew John would take so much more seriously than his usual brothel flings. If John went out and sought out a prostitute, if he had sex with some random man he’d found in a bar, it would feel like a betrayal of what they’d done together, a betrayal of Laszlo’s trust. Laszlo had more or less just ensured that John would be much less likely to sleep with a prostitute- and if he did, he would probably feel like a bastard for doing it, drawing unfavorable parallels between himself and what Julia had done to him.  
_  
Laszlo, you terrible, clever bastard of a man._

John sighed. “ _Yes_ , Laszlo,” He assured him. “I’ll come to you first.”  
  
Laszlo smiled, and it seemed for all the world to be a genuine one; he was happy that John would come to him again, whether for personal reasons or the ones he claimed, John couldn’t know. “Good.” His hand resumed its stroking, and John settled in again, cheek pressing against Laszlo’s bare shoulder, eyes falling shut.  
  
However it had come about, John felt good, and he’d take a good night of sleep if he could get it.  
  
The rest he’d figure out later.

-End


End file.
